Schiermonnikoog, the last part of the Netherlands to be liberated from Nazi occupation, is commemorating the 80th anniversary of its freedom. The island was held by a group of 120 Nazis and Dutch collaborators for nearly six weeks after the official surrender in 1945.

The group was led by SS officer Robert Lehnhoff, infamous for his brutality in Groningen. Lehnhoff and his followers fled to Schiermonnikoog when Groningen was about to fall to the Allies. Their plan to escape to the German island of Borkum was thwarted by the local German naval commander, Arnold Rehm.

Rehm, recognizing the war was lost, refused to aid them and confined them to a farmhouse in the dunes. On May 25, 1945, war crimes investigator Hermann Kloppenburg, disguised as a Canadian officer, ordered the Nazi officers to surrender.

While Lehnhoff and his group complied, around 600 German troops remained in bunkers on the island until June 11, when they finally surrendered to the Canadian army.

Theun Thalsma, 88, who grew up on the farm occupied by the SS officers, recalled the island being off-limits during the war. “Large parts of the island were fenced off during the war: they were forbidden territory,” he stated.

After the war, the SS officers faced trial for war crimes. Lehnhoff was executed in 1950. The regular soldiers, who had largely remained inactive, returned to Germany as free men.

The island, previously owned by a German aristocratic family, was confiscated by the Dutch government in December 1945. The family was later compensated by the German courts in 1985.